{"id":494780,"date":"2026-06-11T19:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/494780\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T19:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:03:09","slug":"breaking-wataru-endo-withdraws-from-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/494780\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking: Wataru Endo Withdraws from World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">In February, Liverpool midfielder Wataru Endo underwent surgery for a broken left foot, with Japan\u2019s captain spending most of the latter stages of the 2025-26 season sidelined and training on his own before slowly being reintegrated into team training towards the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">However, with the player appearing to be at least close to regaining full fitness in May and then able to join up with Japan for a pre-World Cup warm-up friendly against Iceland on May 31st where he played a half of football, there had been no real suggestions that Endo\u2019s World Cup could be in dout.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Today, though, Japan announced that their captain was withdrawing\u2014and that he had spent the past week back in solo training at the national team camp in Nashville after suffering a recovery setback. He will be replaced in the squad by forward Shuto Machino of Borussia M\u00f6nchengladbach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">As recently as two days ago, Endo was still seen as a key part of Japan\u2019s 2026 World Cup hopes, with the 33-year-old midfielder speaking to reporters on Tuesday and saying, \u201cWe will do our best with pride and passion to achieve something we\u2019ve never seen before in Japan\u2019s soccer history.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In February, Liverpool midfielder Wataru Endo underwent surgery for a broken left foot, with Japan\u2019s captain spending most&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,29990,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-494780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-liverpool-team-news","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}